My sinus surgery

I had 3 Procedures…

POLYP REMOVAL

MAXILLARY ANSTROSTOMY

ETHMOIDECTOMY

My Sinus Surgery

Polyps are relatively easy to lance and remove. Just like pickin grapes!

I wanted the Doc to save these for me so I could make a polyp snow globe but he wouldn’t go for it

POLYP REMOVAL Polyps are a small, benign growth in your nasal passage kind of like a grape or grape cluster.

They make it hard to breathe and block mucus drainage ending up in sinus infections. To give yourself an idea of how having polyps feel, just shove a grape up one of your nostrils and go about your day normally. Breathing, sleeping, blowing your nose are all affected. These suckers gotta go!

There are two sinus cavities below your eyes inside your cheekbones. These are called the Maxillary Sinuses. They normally drain into your nasal passage and into your throat or out your nostrils. If they don’t, bacteria will thrive in this warm, moist area and cause infection. The surgery involves draining this area and then making the drainage tunnels wider so that they drain better. Kind of like a roto-rooter.

It’s all about the drainage man.


The ethmoid sinuses are a beehive of 18 to 22 cavities and located between your eyes, behind the bridge of the nose. All of your other sinuses drain through them or next to them. If this area is often blocked, infection occurs and spreads to the other sinuses. The surgery involves sticking an ultrasonic probe into the area and smashing up all the honeycomb like bones that make up the cavities thereby creating one large cavity that drains easier.

This one scares me the most because you are a very short distance from your optic nerve and only a thin walled bone separates this area from your brain. Blindness only occurs in 1/10th of 1% of patients though so I wasn’t too worried

It’s still about the drainage man.

ETHMOIDECTOMY

ETHMOIDECTOMY

ETHMOIDECTOMY This is another view of the Ethmoid Cavity. In this picture a mechanical burr is being used to break up the honeycomb bones.

This also shows a puncture through the thin walled bone that separates this area from the brain. Oops! Sucks to be you bro.

SUMMARY With all said and done, it wasn’t that bad of a surgery. With today’s advances in orthoscopic surgery, nasal surgery is much less

complicated.

In the past, these types of surgery were done through the face – above the eyebrow, through the cheek or jaw, and as shown here for an Ethmoidectomy, between the eye and bridge of nose. Nasty!

Caldwel Luc Procedure done through the mouth to clear the maxillary sinus. Ouch.

External Ethmoidectomy

My sinus surgery

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